The First Methodist Church, just to the south of the Goose Hollow MAX stop, formerly served as a shelter for Portland State University students experiencing homelessness. It shut down in June 2023 due to lack of funding. Credit: Photo by Kaia Sand
A shelter for homeless Portland State University students has been closed for almost a year for a reason far too common within responses to homelessness. The Landing, a shelter at The First Methodist Church next to the Goose Hollow MAX stop, simply does not have the funds to operate year after year.
However, students need that shelter now more than ever.
About 19% of all PSU students experienced homelessness in the past year, up from around 16% in 2019 and 2020, according to the PSU Student Housing Insecurity Report published this week by PSU’s Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative.
Most concerning is how homelessness disproportionately impacts particular students — Black and Indigenous students, people with disabilities, veterans, students with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, immigrants and LGBTQIA2S+ students.
Students previously in the foster care system experienced homelessness in the last year at a harrowing rate of 40%.
Nearly a quarter of all students who identify as gender queer, nonbinary and transgender experienced homelessness in the last year.
The report’s definition of homelessness includes several different living situations, similar to how federal rules measure it for K-12 students — outdoors, motels, RVs, campers, shelters, structures not set up for human habitation, transitional housing, group homes and couch surfing.
The top reported causes of homelessness are housing costs and lack of income to meet those costs, according to the report.
Past inequities drive future inequities, and this is especially egregious in higher education. After all, colleges and universities are where people go to build their futures. They learn, they set goals, they dream — for their own lives and also for society.
It’s hard to aspire toward goals when one’s basic needs are neglected.
Some Street Roots vendors have spent years trying to get an education. Several are currently at Portland Community College, but the costs and accompanying debt overwhelm people. One Street Roots vendor told me last week how she’d love to finish her PCC degree, but accumulated debt prevents her from registering, and there’s no future where she can earn her way out of that debt.
The challenge of achieving academic goals while homeless is borne out in a study by the University of Massachusetts. Students experiencing homelessness were “13 times more likely to have failed courses and were 11 times more likely to have withdrawn or failed to register for more courses.” Life gets in the way.
Notably, when students don’t have to worry about housing, they more easily succeed in college. In a study in Florida where students received free housing — “22% of whom were experiencing homelessness — showed positive impacts on retention and graduation when compared to a randomized control group of their peers.”
PSU ran a housing pilot for first-generation college students in its Summer Bridge Program that recently concluded its second year and found similar success. The Office of Student Success reported, “students persisted in their educations at much higher rates than their peers.” PSU should continue and expand the pilot.
The university also provides emergency motel vouchers spanning a few days. SNAP-enrolled students can use emergency funds and assistance for housing; and a partnership with College Housing NW provides affordable student housing. Funding is not stable, though, for most of these efforts, according to the report.
Angelita Morillo, a community organizer most recently running for city council, has described to me how she was one of those Portland State Students. She slept in stairwells and parks; she couch-surfed. It was only when a former teacher opened up their home that Morillo found stability to complete her degree.
Students deserve that stability. The Landing was designed to maintain a connection to campus. Close by on transit, students had access to the internet and a mailing address, and they didn’t have to leave during the day. They had one meal a day and access to a food pantry — more than half of PSU students reported food insecurity in the past 30 days — as well as showers, bathrooms, washers and dryers.
The report estimates that running the shelter would cost $50,000-$110,000 a year. Costs are kept low because the First Methodist Church donates the space, and students volunteer to staff it.
Re-opening that shelter should be a bare minimum priority for PSU — a school whose origins are in displacement.
PSU began as the Vanport Extension Center in 1946 for people who remained in Vanport, then Oregon’s second largest city, created for shipyard workers in World War II. The racist clause in the Oregon constitution excluding Black people from settling in the state was repealed only two decades earlier, and many Black families finally settled in Oregon by moving to Vanport. All the residents, and Vanport Extension Center, were displaced by the 1948 Vanport flood. Those are the origins of PSU.
Universities pulse with inequity across the nation, but PSU should lead the way in insisting that students have basic needs met. Reopening and sustaining the Landing is one small, necessary step.
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
